The Publishing Journey – Step 13 – Swag?
“You’ve got to have something to hand out at book fairs and conferences and book clubs, something that people can use and each time they use it think of buying your book!” This is a bit of advice I received from the more experienced authors in my group of writers. But what should it be? A tote bag? A pen? A badge? Oooooh, pricey! I settled on a bookmark – appropriate, useful, and I could design my own by copying some of the ones I had received myself. (see samples below).
Design my own. Hmmm. I went on line and found Print Place, which offered the tools needed to design all sorts of printed items, including a variety of bookmarks.
I’ve designed more than a few photo books. I thought I could throw together a bookmark with little trouble, given the excellent tools available on Print Place’s online site.
I was wrong. I made mistakes. Then I made mistakes while fixing the first mistakes. Words appeared which I had meant to over-write. Words disappeared from the second set of proofs which had been set perfectly in the first set.
I kept rejecting the proof samples sent to me. I accidentally sent up a new job entirely rather than sending the corrections to the old job number, and risked being charged twice. The Customer Service Princess (Princess was her actual name or title, per the email) assured me that my corrected version was the one in the print queue, but the proofs sent to me continued to show errors. (Can you see the problem in the proof at right?
Finally, it all came together. The bad job was cancelled. The final proof was correct.
And they arrived, and look wonderful. If you leave me a note, I’ll send you one!